


wish to god we'd never met

by castavision



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, Time Travel, Timelines, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22163221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/castavision/pseuds/castavision
Summary: Everyone makes mistakes. Set at some point after The Waters of Mars (sort of)
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Rose Tyler
Kudos: 7





	wish to god we'd never met

**Author's Note:**

> Posting this old-ish fic to kick off finally creating an account on here :)

The year is 6793, the planet is Atria B, and he is, perhaps in deference to human customs for wandering souls, alone at a bar. Contrary to popular belief, he can actually choose not to become intoxicated as long as certain substances do not inhibit his physiological alcohol sequestration and screening facilities; however, at the moment he is not paying much attention to those facilities, and is — in old Earth terms — completely smashed.   
“And would you believe it, right after I told the queen I’d saved her daughter, and brought the crown princess right up to the throne safe and sound, she ordered me incinerated! Now I know that is the custom on Rasavitae’s sister planet, that anyone who touches the royal family has to die, but I was really expecting better. So I told her — “ — here he giggles uncontrollably for a moment, hiccups, and moves on — “I told her, your Majesty, I’m the Doctor, and I have to check the gear boxes on every member of the royal line once a millennia — and her highness popped the lasers out of her shoulders! Now I know what they say about never trusting a cyborg queen as far as you can throw one which, given my propensity to keep antimagnets in my pockets — bigger on the inside, I’ll have you know — but still, I rather expected—” a hand on his shoulder brings his confused rambling to a halt, and he turns abruptly, if a bit unsteadily.  
“Oh, hello—” His face freezes instantly, the lax, intoxicated expression shuttering like a blackout curtain was drawn in haste.  
Rose Tyler, startled by his reaction, freezes too. She draws her hand back, delicately, and says, “Doctor?” But even as she asks, she realizes that something is wrong. His hair is different — a little longer, and styled differently than it had been a few minutes ago, and his face looks — not older, exactly, but sadder, more worn.  
“What’s going on?” She takes a step back, concern swirling in her eyes, hazel with the barest threat of gold.  
There’s a word in Gallifreyan, he thinks to himself, half dazed. A word that if he had to say it in English he would translate as inevitable, but what it really is is more like has never happened before, has always happened, will happen, is about to happen very far ahead, has just happened a very long time ago. He murmurs this word under his breath like a quiet prayer, and Rose Tyler, the shopgirl who liked chips any day of the week and beans on toast and dyeing her hair and who looked into the heart of the TARDIS and let the TARDIS look into her, understands immediately.  
“I’m sorry,” she says softly, and he wants to say, no, don’t be, never you, all of this — but it would be a lie, because she’s gone, and she sees it in his eyes.  
She steps further, almost half turns without looking away from him, so many questions burning in her eyes but she looks willing to let them smolder indefinitely. Ever the fool, and a woefully intoxicated one at that, he suddenly blurts,  
“Wait.” She stops immediately, looking at him with something like hope.  
“Where am I?” He asks hoarsely. She blinks and frowns, clearly trying to figure that much out herself — where is he in his timeline, is he alright, how long has it been, does he have anyone, what happened to her, is she— Then she realizes what he means, and with obvious relief she quickly replies, “Picking up dinner. Meeting at the TARDIS. We got to the city a few minutes ago.” He opens and closes his mouth and wonders how he missed this. His own TARDIS is three days’ ride away, but he must have been really sloshed not to feel his own presence enter this city or even to feel it on the planet. And his younger self certainly has no excuse, unless he (yes, he remembers it now, in the awful nauseating your-core-fundamental-self-just changed way, that he felt his own future presence and saw no need to worry since he just wanted to grab dinner and chances of actually running into himself were rather slim. Fool for not thinking of Rose, whose timeline tended to twist through his like a vine on a trellis).  
In a surprisingly smooth motion for someone so thoroughly intoxicated, he rises from his chair, steps forward, grabs Rose by the shoulders and hugs her tightly. After a blissful moment he pulls back and holds both of her hands as gently as he can, suddenly feeling the weight and the coarseness of the past days, years, millennia, he hardly counts, that he has been alone.  
“Thank you,” he says fiercely, and her eyes shine with something delighted and heartbroken. Thank you for this stolen moment, he thinks. Thank you for not telling my younger self about it. He’ll sense it but he really doesn’t want to know. Not what he will become, without you to stop him. Rose, the things I’ve done —  
She smiles hesitantly, but nods determinedly.  
He takes that as his cue and lets go, walking towards the door and the misty grey evening. Not so different from 21st century London, he thinks to himself absently, and steps outside. Rose does not follow.


End file.
